Melora twisted gracefully about her center of mass, surveying the expanse laid out around them, and reached out to cup Avior in one hand. The simulation actually let her feel warmth from the shrunken red-orange giant. “I don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t seem so huge from this vantage point. You really should come up here, give it a try.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Lieutenant, I’d rather keep my feet firmly planted.”
“Your choice, Kent. Though I’d have thought you’d learned your lesson about gravity.” Shortly before Titan’s launch, Norellis and gravity had had a difference of opinion in a vertical Jefferies tube, and as usual, gravity’s arguments had carried the greater force, earning the ensign some quality time with the ship’s medical staff.
“I did,” the human countered. “The lesson is, stay close to the deck.”
“Well, how about you, Cadet?” Melora asked, shifting her gaze to Orilly. If anything, the cadet seemed to be having a harder time than Norellis. Even though the Irriol’s paws gave her a solid quadrupedal footing on the balcony, the two trunks extending from the base of her wide, thick-necked head clutched the railing tightly with their four-fingered hands. The diamond-shaped armor scales covering her body, which Norellis had likened to those of an Earth animal called a pangolin, were slightly raised as if in alarm.
“No, thank you,” Orilly said in her quiet voice, emanating from the rounded mouth between her trunks. “Although this is a marvelous simulation, I am not comfortable with all this…space. It reminds me how far I am from…home.” Her golden-brown scales drooped.
“Come on, Malar, there’s more to life than home,” Melora said cheerfully.
“Not for Irriol. We are very empathic, with our own, at least. To be severed from the Whole, to be alone, it is…difficult.” Melora couldn’t read her expressions well, but she got the impression that Orilly had pulled back from a stronger word. “No offense to you or the fleet…but it is not something we endure by choice.”
“So why are you in Starfleet?” Melora asked.
When Orilly didn’t answer, Norellis stepped in. “I guess you don’t know about Irriol.”
Melora shrugged. “Plenty of species out there. Hard to keep track of them all.”
“If she’s off her world, it means she’s…well…”
“I am an exile,” Orilly finished.
“Oh!” She frowned. “Wait a minute…if your people can’t stand being offworld, then exile must be…”
“The worst penalty on their books,” Norellis said. “Irriol are a nonviolent people. No death penalty, ever.”
“No,” Orilly said. “Worse.”
“So you’re a criminal?!”
“Know that I would never do anything to violate my oath or my duty,” Orilly said in great earnest. “For only by serving my people well can I hope to be allowed back home.”
“Okay, I wasn’t questioning that.” She knew Starfleet would never have let her in the Academy if her behavior had been suspect. “But…can I ask what it was you did?”
Orilly’s trunks wriggled. “It is…difficult to explain to outsiders. And troubling for me to discuss. But it does not correspond to anything your peoples call a crime.”
“Was it some taboo you violated, then?”
“No, much more than that. I did true harm. I did not wish to, but I was foolish and irresponsible and…there was much cost to others.”
“But you didn’t kill anyone.”
She lowered her head. “Lives were lost…but not in any way that the laws or ethics of other worlds would find me culpable for.”
Lucky you, Melora thought. She couldn’t say the same about herself. During the crisis on her homeworld four years ago, she had been directly responsible for the death of a leading citizen, Tangre Bertoran. Starfleet had absolved her of wrongdoing, declaring it a defensive act, but Melora had been harder on herself, and had taken a leave of absence to atone in seclusion.
It struck her that Orilly, in her own way, was also atoning in seclusion, perhaps in some ways a more profound seclusion than Melora could grasp. She wished she could understand the nature of the offense, the better to offer her support to the troubled-seeming cadet. Maybe with time, she could.
“Well, tell you what,” she said. “Let’s get to work, take your mind off things. Computer! Overlay sensor data. Display possible biosigns.”
The computer complied, breaking down the various biosignature types by color coding and labels: spectroscopic results suggesting molecular oxygen and respiratory gases, thermal signatures and energy curves consistent with life processes, Fourier extractions of possible neural EM signatures, and so forth. Titan’s cutting-edge sensors gave them greater clarity over greater distances than Melora would’ve thought possible. The virtual sky around them teemed with signatures; even if half of them turned out to be false alarms, there was enough life showing up in this preliminary scan to keep them busy for years.
“Aah!”
The cry came from Norellis. Melora spun to face him. “What is it?”
He looked embarrassed, and pointed at a sensor reading that hovered next to his head. “I turned my head and there it was, right in my face. Startled me.”
Melora worked the control padd in her hands, telling the holotank’s forcefields to push her gently toward the image. “What is that? There’s no planet there. It’s very close to us….”
“Maybe a ship!” Norellis peered closer. “Or multiple ships. Hard to make them out.”
“Here, let me increase the scale….”
She was interrupted by a keening wail from Orilly. “No!!” the Irriol cried, rearing up on her hind legs and stepping back as though in fear. She bumped into the balcony and lost her balance, toppling out into the free-fall zone beyond. It worsened her panic, her six limbs flailing as if in a futile attempt to flee from…something.
“Cadet!” Melora worked the padd, using the forcefields to catch Orilly and guide her gently back to the balcony. Taking a second to switch on her support armature, she took a deep breath and climbed over the rail into the gravity zone so she could come to Orilly’s aid. But the Irriol’s flailing trunks made her pull back; her bones were somewhat more fragile than those of beings raised in planetary gravities. Norellis moved in and tried to hold her down, but just got knocked aside for his troubles. “Malar, what is it? What’s wrong?” Melora cried, striving to catch her gaze and get through to her.
Orilly met her eyes for a moment, but there seemed to be no recognition there. “Help us!” she cried. “We are dying!”
Will Riker had known something was about to happen before it started.
It wasn’t due to any great captain’s intuition, though. He just knew Deanna Troi, knew her every nuance of expression better than he knew his own. So when she’d abruptly grown distracted as they engaged in light banter with the rest of the bridge crew (well, all except Tuvok—the middle-aged Vulcan tactical officer wasn’t the bantering type), he’d realized that she was sensing something, and readied himself for what she might say or do next.
What he hadn’t expected was that Tuvok would be the first to react. Hearing a strangled baritone cry from the tactical station, Riker whirled to see Tuvok gasping and clutching the console for support. His teeth were clenched and he was clearly struggling for control…but his eyes showed panic and dread. Glancing over at Deanna, Riker saw the same emotions in her eyes, though she seemed to be controlling it better. “Mr. Tuvok, report,” Riker snapped, hoping the appeal to discipline would help him focus.
“I am…receiving telepathic impulses…raw emotion…terror! Pain! Aahh!!” He wrenched his eyes shut, fighting the panic.
As Riker moved closer to Tuvok, Deanna came up behind him. “I sense the same things. Fear, agony, loss…also anger.”
“Why is it hitting him harder?” Vale asked.
Deanna looked away for a moment. “I’ve…had reason to learn to strengthen my shields against mental intrusion.”
Riker wi
nced at the reminder of Shinzon, and of the other mental incursions Deanna had been subjected to over her career. But this was a time for business. “Is this the same thing you sensed the other night? The nightmare?”
“I think so.”
Tuvok was still struggling. If anything, he seemed embarrassed by Troi’s superior control. “Bridge to sickbay,” Riker said. “Dr. Ree, we could use you up here.”
“I was just about to call you,” came Ree’s growling tenor. “Several crew members have just come down with severe panic attacks. Cadet Orilly, Lieutenant Chamish, even Ensign Savalek and the Lady T’Pel. All psi-sensitives, sir. I imagine Commanders Troi and Tuvok are reacting similarly, are they not?”
“I’m managing it, Doctor,” Deanna told him. “But Tuvok is having a harder time coping.”
“If you will have him brought to sickbay, I should be able to suppress his telepathic senses.”
“No, Captain,” Tuvok said, gathering himself with an effort. “The initial shock…has subsided. I am…in control.”
“I still want the doctor to look at you,” Riker said. He had an ulterior motive to the offer, thinking Tuvok might welcome an excuse to be there for his wife, T’Pel. When Tuvok had accepted the post of tactical and second officer, it had been with the provision that his wife be allowed to join him aboard the ship. After being separated from her for seven years by Voyager’s abduction to the Delta Quadrant, and facing the prospect of a similar separation twice in recent months (first by imprisonment on Romulus, then by Titan’s stranding in the Small Mag Cloud), he had expressed a wish to have her with him aboard the ship, and she had assented to come.
But if Tuvok was concerned for his wife, he showed no outward sign. “No! I…believe this to be a distress call. If so, the insights I can provide may be needed. They are only emotions…I am their master.”
Riker turned to Troi. “Do you agree? A distress call?”
“I do,” she answered without hesitation. “Something out there is pleading desperately for help. Something with a very powerful mind.”
And what could terrify something that powerful? Riker wondered. Whatever it was, they would need to be ready. He looked over at Tuvok, gauging his mental state. The Vulcan’s reputation as one of the fabled Voyager survivors had preceded him, but Riker still didn’t know the man well enough to tell whether he was really in control or simply putting on a brave front. But he decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “All right. You’re relieved from tactical, Commander—” He cut off Tuvok’s protest with a look. “But you can remain on the bridge to advise.”
Tuvok nodded stiffly. “Acknowledged.”
“Mr. Keru, take over tactical.” The big Trill worked his security station’s controls, slaving the tactical console to it. Riker turned to the tan-skinned Bajoran at the science station. “Mr. Jaza, scan the area for life signs, psionic energy, any unusual phenomena. Let’s see who’s trying to spread around their bad mood.”
Jaza replied promptly. “Stellar cartography reports strong life signs at bearing 282 mark 20, range point-one-two light-years.”
“Is there a star system there?”
“Negative, sir; they’re in open space, moving at high impulse. Hold on…. I’m getting energy discharges.”
“A battle?” Christine Vale asked.
“Hard to tell. The discharges seem bioelectric.”
“Let’s find out. Ensign Lavena—set an intercept course, warp eight, and engage.”
“Aye, Captain. Estimate arrival in three minutes.”
As the ship jumped to warp, Riker moved back to Deanna’s side. “Do you still get the sense of familiarity?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, maintaining proper discipline while they were on the bridge. “It’s extremely alien, yet it’s something I’ve been in contact with before…a long time ago, I think. I’m trying to remember.”
“I believe I can get a visual on long-range sensors,” Jaza reported. “Just a moment…there.”
Riker turned to the screen. At first all he saw was a group of pearlescent blobs of light, little more than pinpoints at this range. They were moving quickly, on erratic, independent courses. As Jaza worked his console, a set of crosshairs targeted the nearest blob and the screen zoomed in, tracking it. It was a translucent, rounded shape, apparently lenticular, with one face turned nearly toward their vantage point. “It reads over a kilometer in diameter,” Jaza said. It was illuminated from within by a bluish glow and by numerous points of reddish light arranged in concentric rings. Faint radial striations subdivided its surface into eight wedges. Riker felt the same sense of uncertain familiarity that Deanna described.
Then it angled sideways and Riker recognized it instantly. The eight long, feathery tentacles that trailed behind it, giving it the aspect of a vast jellyfish swimming through the lightless depths of the ocean, made it instantly recognizable. “The Farpoint creatures!”
Vale turned to him. “Sir?”
“We encountered them on our very first mission on the Enterprise, Deanna and I,” Riker explained. “Sixteen years ago, in the Deneb system. I think we ended up calling them ‘star-jellies.’ They’re shapeshifters, and more than that. They could read thoughts and synthesize any object you could think of, like living replicators. They even have transporter capability.”
“They sound more like ships than living beings,” Jaza opined.
“They’re definitely life-forms,” Troi told him. “Immensely powerful telepaths and empaths. I’ve never felt such overwhelming emotions. That first time, whenever I lowered my mental shields, it was like I became a conduit for their emotions, feeling them as if they were my own, and unable to resist them.”
“I can…verify that assessment, Commander,” Tuvok said stiffly.
“That would explain what’s happening to the crew,” Vale observed. “But what is it they’re so afraid of?”
“There’s a smaller cluster of objects closing on the, umm, school,” Jaza said. “They read similar to the jellies, but different.” He switched the viewscreen to a wider view. Harpoons of purple light were flashing through the school, scattering the star-jellies still further.
“Shields on standby,” Riker ordered Keru.
“Shields, aye,” the burly, bearded Trill acknowledged. “And weapons, sir?”
“Not yet,” Riker said as the attackers came into view. He recognized them as well: gray, lenticular metallic shapes, firing destructive blasts of violet plasma from their central concavities. “They’re another form of the star-jellies—apparently their attack mode.”
Vale frowned. “Have we stumbled into some kind of civil war?”
“It could simply be competition for food or territory,” Jaza suggested.
“Either way,” Vale went on, “I don’t think it’s something we have any business interfering in.”
Riker realized she was probably right, though it filled him with regret. There was something ethereally lovely about the star-jellies. He still remembered the sense of awe he’d felt when they’d revealed themselves at Deneb, when the one held captive by the Bandi had shed its imposed disguise as “Farpoint Station” and ascended into space, and reached out to caress its mate’s tendrils in a gesture whose simple poignancy transcended species.
“Why don’t they fight back?” Keru asked. Riker realized he was right; the attacks were entirely one-sided.
“Maybe they can only fire in the armored mode,” Jaza said.
“There’s more,” Deanna said. “Somehow they just…can’t. Or won’t.”
Just then, one of the jellies was struck a dead-on blow to its ventral side, between the tendrils. Two of the wispy appendages broke free and spun away. At the moment of impact, Deanna and Tuvok both convulsed in pain, and Tuvok let out a strangled scream. Vapor erupted from the wound, and the jelly’s internal lights flared, flickered and then fell dark, first the blue glow, then the rings.
“Counselor? Mr. Tuvok?”
“Apologies, Captain,” Tuvok sai
d. “Not just…the creature’s death throes. The others…”
Deanna nodded. “The grief of the others, combined…it’s extremely intense. Even with my shields up I felt it.”
“Can you sense anything from the attackers?”
She shook her head. “But I can’t really probe without lowering my defenses, and I’m hesitant to do that.”
“Tuvok?”
“I…do not believe there is anything to sense, Captain. The creatures feel the attackers are…wrong…a corruption…there is a revulsion, as though toward a corpse.”
Deanna nodded. “Yes. These are like dead things to them, and yet they’re attacking, menacing. The jellies feel a sense of mortal dread, as though the attackers were…well, the closest analogies I can think of are the zombies from old Earth monster movies.”
Vale frowned. “Jaza, scan the attackers more closely for biosigns.”
“If I remember right,” Riker told her, “the Enterprise’s sensors couldn’t penetrate them. There are substances in their hulls…or hides…that resist scans.”
“We’ve learned a few new tricks in the past sixteen years, sir,” Jaza replied. It was an understatement; the Luna class carried prototype sensors beyond anything else in Starfleet. “Uh-huh, those hulls are well shielded, but just give me a moment to calibrate…There. The attackers show limited activity in some biosystems, including propulsion and defense…but no anabolic processes, and nothing that resembles cognitive activity. The walking dead indeed. But I’m also reading numerous biosignatures inside them.”
Riker looked up at him sharply. “What kind of biosignatures?”
“Just a moment, I’m refining resolution…. They seem to be endothermic bipeds, about our size.”
Riker exchanged a look with Deanna, then turned to Dakal at ops. “Cadet, try hailing them.”
“Hailing…No response,” the young Cardassian said.
“A crew?” Vale asked.
“I’ve been inside two of these creatures,” Riker said. “In at least some of their forms, they contain passages that resemble corridors, with a habitable environment inside. They certainly could be adapted into ships.”
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